Karen Peters shares her witness story of Conversion of Heart with Truth of the Spirit as we continue our series on Life in the Spirit with host Patti Brunner of Patriarch Ministries. As St. Paul wrote to Timothy, “God saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to His own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus.” Life in the Spirit urges us to be open to that grace that transforms us. Life in the Spirit Fall 2022 at Patriarch House Series playlist is available at Life in the Spirit Fall 2022 at Patriarch House – YouTube
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Transcript of Witness of Conversion of Heart
Karen Peters – Life in the Spirit
[Patti] Let’s begin with a prayer. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, we just thank You so much for all that You do for us. We thank you for gathering us together tonight that we might learn more about Your Holy Spirit and the fullness You offer to us. Dear Lord, open our eyes, our ears and our hearts to Your word through our speaker tonight. In Jesus’ Name we pray. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Welcome to Truth of the Spirit, I’m Patti Brunner. We’re glad that you’ve joined us for this Life in the Spirit episode. We have a special speaker, Karen Peters. Karen is the former DRE at our St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Rogers. And she is a gifted speaker. We are happy to have her with us tonight. Welcome Karen.
[Karen] Hi, my name is Karen Peters and I’ve been asked to give a witness talk for Life in the Spirit. And initially I was, “who, me?” What would I really have to share or say? So, here’s where I will start with. Now I can make some proclamations today. I can say that I am a beloved daughter of God. I am a Catholic Christian who loves the Lord with all my heart, all my soul and all my strength and strive to grow in that every day. And I can share with you that I am a work in progress. My faith journey has not been a straight path, it’s not been a glorious all on mountain tops. I’ve been in some deep valleys and some windy curvy roads that I chose to take myself off path and not strive to go where the Lord was really calling me.
You know, I come from a Catholic family, I was baptized Catholic. I did my First Communion. I was not confirmed until many, many years later, came from a family where we suffered divorce three times in our family. But one thing that was always very steadfast was that my mother always read scripture. She always would be reading her bible. And not that I wanted anything to do with that while I was growing up or wanted to hear any of the beautiful words that she would share. But there were some things that she would share during my tumultuous teen aged years that decades later would resonate in my mind and in my heart. And I remember that one time specifically her sharing, “You know, God knows the hairs, the number of hairs on your head.” I remember looking at her and thinking, ‘What a peculiar thing to say.” Decades later, I found the truth to that. But, you know, that was always a testament to me because at the time, we were what you call a C & E family. We would go to mass on Christmas and Easter. And I never really understood my faith or the love of God or living with, you know, just a very Spirit-filled being. And it took me a lot of years to discover that.
So, I’m going to share with you just a few of the highlights through that journey. I can recall one time in high school, through some difficult years, and my mom had watched some different TV evangelists on the programs. And I was home by myself one time and I remember seeing Jimmy Swaggert, you know, giving a tearful plea for us to turn our lives over to Jesus, to ask Him into your heart. And I was at a very dark place. And I remember thinking, “What do I have to lose?” So, I did. Dropped to my knees and said, “Jesus, come into my heart!” I had no idea what those words meant—why they were powerful. I didn’t have this glorious moment of mountain top experience. I just cried tears. And they were gone.
There were other times that I was journeying as a young adult, and I know that it was the power of prayer from my mother who just never gave up on her faith. She wasn’t always welcome in the Catholic Church because she was divorced three times, and her kids didn’t have all their sacraments and things like that, but she never gave up. And the Lord always held on to her hand and led her on a different path. But her testimony witnessed to me was enough to persevere, you know, to keep on. And I recall, in my mid-twenties, don’t know why, don’t know how; I’m in a music store and I’m going through a stack of CD’s and I’m looking at Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and come across a Christian artist, Michael W. Smith, and picked up one of his CD’s and those songs were just so powerful. And I didn’t know why, but my soul felt—and I didn’t even know it was my soul at the time—I just felt good inside. I felt uplifted, joyful. So, the Lord was always giving me these little nuggets along my faith journey. Sometimes I would recognize them, but most times not. And I can recall just struggling to find my way and going to different churches: Baptist Church, Pentecostal, Non-Denominational; but never really a Catholic church. Sometimes at Easter when I was back home visiting my mom we would go. And I recall being on some business travel with a friend who we would sit and read our bibles and we would not really know what we were discerning or interpreting but there were such beautiful nuggets in there that words would speak to me. And she invited me to go to a Baptist church with her. And I’d never been, we went and walked in, and we were the only Caucasian people in the group, but they welcomed us with opened arms, and very lovingly brought us in and sat us down. And that was really the first time I ever really experienced just a very joyful and vibrant praise the Lord and singing, clapping, and you know words that I experienced differently for the first time. And they asked anyone who wanted to be prayed over to come up and I didn’t know what meant and Cynthia gave me an elbow and grabbed my arm and up we went. And I thought, okay, I’m standing there with my eyes closed, my head down, and my hands out like that and Cynthia is standing next to me and the pastor comes along and the next thing I know is—boom—I am out on the ground, and I look up at Cynthia and she’s got eyes that are saucers looking at me and I am not sure what is going on and I stood up. No mountain top experiences. Nothing earth-shattering that I experienced, but the Lord was building me up. He was touching me. He was strengthening me.
And just before Tom and I had our first son, he was only a couple months old, I remember going to Mass, because at this point in time, when I was pregnant with our son Dylan I was like, you know, I’ve got to raise this child in a faith. I don’t know how or what, but we started going back to Mass. And we had, um, gotten married twice. Once because we out in the gardens out in God’s creation because that’s where I wanted to get married and then a couple weeks later, we were married in the Church to have our marriage blessed and convalidated.
Why? Because I felt it was the right thing to do. Don’t know why. Maybe because, you know, the Lord had touched me and stirring things up in me and I didn’t realize it at the time. And so, these silent blessings and graces that God had given me—didn’t know them then but in retrospect I know them now. So, I remember standing in Mass one time, with Dylan little, squirmy little guy, and I remember looking around and being, “Lord, there’s got to be more than this. You know, we’re saying these rote prayers and we’re doing this,” and I said, “I want to discover You, I want to know more. Why are we doing this? Why are we saying these prayers? Why are we here in worship?” Who am I to demand this of the Lord, but I was like, “Here I am, here I am”? Like, “I come to seek You.” And, wow, when you ask, look out because you receive! Because from that moment on, that moment of surrender to say “Okay, God, it’s You, it’s not me.” Let go of this intellect, let go of this attitude, let go of these preconceived beliefs, teachings, whatever I know, that I don’t know I’m clinging to, I’m here; I’m all in, just show me the way.
And so, the past 20 plus years have been just an amazing journey of a greater awareness and discovery for me. And it was though just some amazing people in the Catholic Church that introduced me to scripture and to really understand what we were reading and introduced me to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Vatican II and documents that the Church has stood on and taught for thousands of years. And I started reading books that people would share on the Early Church Fathers and going back, because I had questions that I didn’t understand, and why did we teach this and that.
So, while He was helping me gain some ‘book knowledge’, some ‘head knowledge’ He was also working on my heart and my spirit. And things had happened in my life that I really didn’t understand or didn’t know why until I introduced into a spiritual life—life in the Spirit. And I’ll share with you a couple of things. So, though my whole life, even as a maybe middle-schooler when I can recall the first time, I would wake up in the middle of the night and have a thought of a person; it could be a stranger that I saw in the grocery store ten years before. But just an incident I would remember that happened I would remember that person. Or a classmate from years ago. And I would just feel compelled to lift them up with good thoughts, or “Lord, bless them” and I didn’t always know what to ask for them in prayer. So, I called them my little “MPG” prayers, my math you do miles per gallon when you are calculating, well for me it was “mercy, peace, and grace”. And so, I’m like, “Okay, Lord, MPG for that person. Mercy Peace and Grace. I don’t know what they need.
Years and years go by. And I was invited to attend a particular training. It was a “Called and Gifted” workshop. In it you were introduced to some charisms and gifts that you are blessed with by God. And you know I knew about the gifts that we received when you are confirmed. And I’d been confirmed, I don’t know, maybe eight or ten years before this, attending this retreat, but as an adult. And they were not the gifts for me internally, but they were the gifts that I was blessed with to help other people and to help build the kingdom of God. And when I was reading through the booklet and it was listing different ones and it has descriptions of them or whatever and I remember coming across the one that said, “Intercessory Prayer”. And one of the things that jumped out at me, among several descriptions was the one, “Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and felt compelled to pray?” And I was like, “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Yes! I have this gift!” So now, the Spirit touched me to help me understand that I had this gift that I now needed to share because the more I shared it the more it was helping to build the kingdom. So, there’s some things they ask you to do to start paying attention to gain your awareness. And one of them was to start to pay attention. People come up to you and ask you “will you pray for me’ or if you are in conversation and someone will say, gosh if someone would just pray. And offer to pray for them and sure enough that started happening to me. It’s like not just on a daily basis it is like multiple encounters throughout my day people would just random people that I was that familiar with and then people that I was familiar with and then I started to become emboldened the Spirit just gave me that spirit of not being just docile and intimidated or fearful, It gave me the spirit of courage when someone would talk about something I would often say, ‘well, can I pray for you about that?’ and I became embolden to reach out to people and just say, “Would you pray for me for this?” or “Can I ask you to pray?” and I was so blessed with experiencing that charism.
So that was not the only one. You know, as the Lord was helping me to understand Him more intimately because you know my favorite bible, the New American Bible, and on the back of it there is a quote from St. Jerome[i] back from, I don’t know, from the 300s, the 400s somewhere in there where it says, “Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ”. And I was like—O—how can I claim to love the Lord, how can I claim Him to be my Lord and Savior if I don’t know what He taught, if I don’t know His words, if I don’t know what the disciples were practicing back when they were walking the earth with Him and able to touch His hands, and I remember in scripture reading about the woman who was in the crowd and she just reached out to touch the tassel, the hem of his cloak, and immediately power left Him and He knew it and He turned around to say, “Who? Who just did that?” I wanted to be that woman, I wanted to feel the power from Him so that He could heal me, so that He could use me, (pause) to help build His kingdom. Because I finally realized that I was created in His image and His likeness. So that meant that in this human flesh that I am, that I have this spirit that lives inside of me, that holiness is inside me, that I am called to live a holy life. And I can remember clearly and distinctly, and for me that was a revelation. I am in the church gathering space, and Msgr. David used to host these Hospitality Fridays, and they were teachings on the faith and on the Church and on prayer and different things. And I remember sitting there and I don’t remember if the specific episode that he had but he talked about us being a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit and I realized that not just the words that I had said or that I understood up here (pointed to head) but in my soul, in the depths of my heart I realized that I had holiness that lived inside of me. I wanted to levitate out of my chair! I wanted to shout from the mountain tops, “I have holiness that lives inside of me! And I was just like, “Oh my gosh! Now I get it! I am not meant to live for this earthly world, I am meant to live for eternity spiritually with God, and the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ, and all the angels and saints. I realized from that day forward that I could not be living my life being ‘Karen-centered’, self-centered. But I had to be God-centered. I had to trust in Him, which was an incredible, incredible act of surrender for me to trust God completely. But He has delivered, time and time again. In times of trial in times, you know, of glory. Where I have, you know, have trusted Him immediately. But through this I was developing a life of prayer. I was developing an openness to the Spirit. I was developing an awareness to people around me who were Spirit-filled or not Spirit-filled. And you know, I was just open to more and more. I recall being at the church one day where we hosted a gentleman who was a guest speaker, and he was offering to lay hands on people. And once again, I went up, surrendered, and next thing again, I found myself down on the floor. And nothing spectacular happened but I could begin to feel a shift.
I recall another time where I was really seeking a lot of healing and asking the Lord to help me forgive different people throughout my lifetime when I was younger, and the Blessed Mother was the one who helped me walk through that. Because I remember reading in scripture that, you know, she was the first apostle. She carried Jesus Christ in her womb for nine months. And I thought, wow, I know the bond I have with my children. And I thought, you know, she knows her son, she knows his love, she will help lead us to Him. And that’s why I pray to the Blessed Mother to ask her intercession. And I had an experience at the chapel in Champion, Wisconsin, Our Lady of Good Help. Where I was just not feeling like I am worthy, like I am able, up for the tasks that I felt like the Lord was calling me to. And she—it was like peeling layers off of me, letting go of all of this. And through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, going to Confession and finally having the courage to confess some things that I had done—or didn’t do. Because I will share with you, all Ten Commandments I have violated or broken in one capacity or another through my lifetime. And I was, “Lord, how can You call me, a sinful woman?” That scarlet ‘S’ should be on my forehead. To be a servant of yours? To help build? And all of that. And He would lead me to places in scripture where He was not calling the perfect and the good and the glory. Because those people who think they are perfect and righteous and this and that, they have scales on their eyes. They are not seeing the truth. We are sinners. And you know the more He reveals to us and the more that I understand about my sinful nature, and I think I work on that and something else greater and grander is revealed. So, Reconciliation helped me to understand just God’s mercy and forgiveness. And His healing can come from prayer, it can come through scripture, or it can come through receiving the Blessed Sacrament.
And another grace He gave me was on a Good Friday, where the priest was processing around with the Blessed Sacrament, and I’d been to umpteen Good Fridays, and I was, “Lord, what am I missing? I’m here, help reveal to me something else. And as they started to process out with the Blessed Sacrament—because Jesus left us on Good Friday—what I felt in my soul and my heart was such a level of despair and loneliness and void that I cannot even articulate in words. And I was like, “Lord, don’t ever let me walk away from You!” I may stumble, I may take my eyes off You. But don’t ever let me walk away from You like I did before.
So, God is good like that. Because then He will share with You and He will introduce you to people, to music, to books, to a calendar with just an amazing inspiration. And so, for me, starting to be open to a life in the Spirit and living in the Spirit, I want to share with you just a couple favorite scripture passages of mine that have always resonated with me. And I had a hard time trusting in the Lord, and I shared that with You.
But I’m going to share with you from Galatians 5. And it goes: “I say then, live by the Spirit, and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh. For the flesh has desires against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. These are opposed to each other so you may not do what you want. But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, rivalry, jealousy, outburst of fury, acts of selfishness, dissension, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like. I warn you like I warned you before. Those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God.”
But here’s where Paul offers some amazing, amazing what I call ‘pulse points’ for me to help me know if I am living in the Spirit. “In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit let us also follow the Spirit.”
So, they became what I would pay attention to on a daily basis, all day long. Was I patient in this situation? Was I kind to this person? Did I practice self-control? Whatever. So, I had so many situations where I such a judgmental mind, where I was not kind or compassionate and so I would be like, “Lord, I can’t do this.” “You know me, You know my disposition. Holy Spirit, help me. Holy Spirit, come. Holy Spirit, come.” There like my favorite little words. “Holy Spirit, come.” Because I know I can’t do this on my own. Because that whole statement that comes just before that I read to you where it says, [Galatians 5:14] “Because the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” It took me a long time to start to be able to practice that because I did not love myself. I did not like myself. I did not like the ulky [yucky] things in me that would rear their ugly head or that I was practicing or that I was saying or that I was doing or not doing. And so, when the Lord started to transform me and help me gain my strength and my identity in God the Father and in the Holy Spirit who was left for us to be our Advocate. Wow, what change things made! Because in Philippians, I will share with you, 4 through 8, Chapter 4 verses 4 through 8, “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Paul goes on to say, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” So, when I was focused and thinking on the opposite, I was thinking of these words, and asking the Holy Spirit. And slowly I could feel the transformation in my mind. And I could feel it in my heart. But what I didn’t know was that people around me were recognizing this transformation and this change. And for years, you know, I didn’t know that. Until people started giving me affirmations about things. And I’ll share a beautiful one with you that happened a year or two ago. Some college students that I have, or children that I have, you know are questioning things about their faith, and about our Catholic faith. And, you know, my daughter was you know questioning and challenging me on something—which I think is beautiful. Because you need to challenge. If you are not challenging someone you are not thinking about it. So, I am happy she is thinking about it. And I pray that the Spirit is leading her and guiding her. And I will share with you in Timothy[ii] a great verse that always helps me with that. But I loved that, you know, my husband spoke up and said, “well, Savannah, honey, you know your mom’s not Catholic because she was told to be Catholic or that’s a dominant religion; she practices her faith because she’s been touched by God. She’s experienced His mercy and His grace.” And I was like, “Yes! Yes!” And for him to share that with her was an incredible testimony that the Spirit was also moving in his life and giving him words to share. Because often times when we don’t know what to say the Holy Spirit will speak through us. And so, I hope you are understanding some of that. So, I shared with you about being holy. And I want to go back to some scripture that my mother had shared with me years ago when I was an unruly teenager. And it was from Leviticus, chapters 19 and 20, two different places. 19:2 it says, “Be holy, for I the Lord, your God, am holy.” And then in 20: 7 “Sanctify yourselves, then and be holy; for I the Lord, your God am holy.”
So, getting my mind around that holiness was just way, way too much for me, and to understand that. I don’t do it on my own. I do it through the grace of the Holy Spirit. And so, two summers ago I went to an amazing conference, the Charismatic Catholic Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, and had an incredible spiritual experience to be able to sing praise and worship with a room full of people that are like-minded, seeking the Lord, wanting to grow ever more to serve Him, a worthy servant. And the blessings that were poured out that weekend were amazing. And then again last summer I went, or this past summer in July 2022, the Holy Spirit really touched me and poured some more gifts for me to help build His Kingdom.
And so, I’ll share with you one last scripture that reminded me. It’s from 2 Timothy, I’m sorry, 2 Timothy Chapter 1, verse 6-9. It says, now Paul is writing to Timothy. “For this reason, I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of hands, of my hands. For God does not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control. So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor me, a prisoner for His sake. But bear your share of hardships for the Gospel for the strength comes from God. He saved us and called us to a holy life.” And so, that’s my journey. That’s where I’m on, I’m a work in progress. It’s only by God’s grace and just a spirit of persevering and seeking to discover Him more intimately and to help receive what He has for me to help build His Kingdom and to grow on my own faith but also to build His Kingdom. And I want to share with you just a quick little prayer from a prayer card from Fr. Stephen Gadberry[iii]—God bless you for sharing this—and this was a prayer that he had printed on his card when he was ordained a priest back in May 2016. And it’s from Father Charles de Foucauld[iv], “Father, I abandon myself into your hands. Do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank You. I am ready for all. I accept all. May only your will be done in me and all your creatures. I wish no more than this O Lord. Into your hands I commend my soul. I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands without reserve and with balanced confidence that you are my father. Amen. Thank you.
[Patti] You’ve been listening to Truth of the Spirit; I am your host, Patti Brunner. We hope you have enjoyed our Life in the Spirit presentation. And we invite you to check out our website, PatriarchMinistries.com for more information about this Life in the Spirit and all of the other things that Truth of the Spirit has to offer you. And then we invite you to come back next time because there is more. With the Holy Spirit there’s always more! Amen.
[i] St. Jerome lived 345 – 420 A.D. “Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ”.
[ii] 2 Timothy 1: 6, 9, 14, 22
[iii] Fr. Stephen Gadberry, also known as the ‘Priest Ninja’ and “Father Flex” after appearing on American Ninja Warrior was ordained in the Diocese of Little Rock, in Arkansas on May 20, 2016. He was featured in the film ”The Making of a Catholic Priest” by Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire Institute.
[iv] Father Charles de Foucauld is a French Catholic priest who died in December 1916. Canonized May 15, 2022, He was a soldier saint; he was an inspiration to Fr Gadberry, a former soldier.
